A/N: DC here. I just wanna say, we know the past few months in real life has been rough. Thank you for still being here. Thank you for reading, reviewing, and frankly, just being here. The world is crazy, and our hope is that SC's and I passion project (because while it always was, it's become even moreso) will bring a minute or two of escapism into your life. The chats and discussions between SC and I continue, and things in the fic will get crazier and crazier, in a good way. I know, seventy one chapters...trust us, we're just getting started.
Chuck moved fast. In a flash, he'd crossed the room and gathered Nicolas Valle up in a steady embrace, even as Sarah could tell he was shocked, his face a pallid greenish hue. And with a surprisingly level-headed urgency, he pulled the First Officer back, away from the body.
Sarah swept in just as quickly as he cleared the way, and she very carefully, without touching Hannah, checked where the blood was coming from. There was a wound at the back of her head. And as she glanced up, trying her best to ignore the muffled anguish of the man who'd been in love with her, she saw where Hannah's head had made contact. The edge of the dresser.
Hannah Liu hadn't fallen. This wasn't an accident. She'd been pushed, she'd hit her head, and now she was gone. Just like that.
Swallowing the thick lump in her throat, taking a deep breath, she pressed a hand to her lips and shut her eyes. They had to act fast. There was a good chance they'd have the finger pointed at them, not by Valle since they were with him, but by the Ring, by the other officers, by the captain even.
But it was also important for them to get that key, or all of this would have been in vain, including Hannah Liu's death.
She stood up and looked at the sight of Chuck still holding the other man steady. Valle shook, tears streaking his cheeks, but what she saw there was anger; more than the anguish, the heartbreak, there was unadulterated anger. And he was looking right at Hannah, his quivering fist pressed to his mouth.
"You have to go," he said then, his voice broken, raspy.
"But you—" Chuck started.
"He's right, Chuck. This needs to be reported and we can't be found here when it is."
"Who did this?" Chuck asked, ignoring her.
"Who do you think?" Nicolas snapped, and he pushed away from Chuck, rising on shaky legs to his full height. "She—" And then he shook his head, wiping at his face with his sleeve. "Go. I'll deal with this. I need to clean myself up and report this to my captain. And you both need to get the hell away from here."
"Nicolas, I'm sorry," Chuck said, standing up as well, still pale. "I'm so sor—"
"Go!" the other man barked.
Sarah moved just as quickly as Chuck had a minute earlier, crossing the room to grab Chuck by his arm and pull him towards the door. "Chuck, let's go. We have to go. Now."
As she began to actively tug him, he turned and looked around the room, resisting and outright breaking her hold. "Wait, wait. Wait. She was killed for a reason… Look. Look, the room's been...ransacked. Somebody was looking for something. The key probably."
Sarah paused. She'd noticed right when they'd filed in, but then Hannah had pulled her attention away from it. "You're right. And they probably got the key from her."
"Or they didn't and she was killed for it," Chuck reasoned.
"They didn't," came the voice from behind them.
Valle was staring down at Hannah again, and he shook himself, looking up at them darkly. "They don't have the key." Before Sarah could ask where it was, even if he probably didn't know the answer, he hurried on. "I'm stepping out to make the call. You both need to be gone by the time I'm done, or I can't help you."
He seemed like he was starting to pull himself together. He was good at his job, she had to give him that. But he had a rough road ahead of him, and she felt a deep ache inside of her for him.
She watched him step outside and took one last look around the place. "Chuck, there has to be something. The Ring probably has the key, no matter what Nicolas says," she whispered, grabbing his wrist. He grabbed her back, his fingers curling around her own wrist and holding tight. She realized he was probably seriously shaken up and repressing it as best he could because it was what spies were supposed to do. She didn't know how that made her feel.
"We need more answers. Not just about where the key is now, but about Hannah. We have nothing on her… It might help us with motive, and if we have motive, we can figure out—" But then he stopped himself, his eyes fastening on her bed. "Her laptop. That's her laptop, right? She probably has things on there…"
"Grab it. Hurry. Before Nicolas sees."
Chuck rushed to the bed, grabbed the laptop, and hid it in his coat. She helped him button it up and they rushed out of the room. She could feel Chuck looking at the First Officer who'd just lost the woman he loved, and she could feel the pain emanating off of him, but she tugged him onward, away from the scene of the crime, away from the woman who might have been innocent in all of this and still lost her life in a senseless act of violence.
It made her angry, and it made her feel sick inside. And this was exactly the sort of thing she hadn't wanted Chuck to have to face. This part of the job, this part of being a spy. It was the roughest part.
When they got back to their room and shut the door, locking it behind them, Chuck broke away from her and went to the desk, unbuttoning his coat and setting the laptop down on it, just looking at it for a few long seconds.
Sarah watched him stand there, his head bowed. And then he hunched over and braced his palms on the desk, letting out a long, shaky breath she could hear from across the room.
And then he made fists with his hands and slammed them both against the top of the desk extremely hard, making her jump.
"Chuck—"
He slammed them down again, then turned and shoved the chair over. Facing her now, he crossed his arms, almost hugging himself, and barely oppressed rage, outright fury marred his features. "Those mother fuckers," he growled, his anger sparking in every syllable. "And what did we do? What did I do? She was in danger. I knew she was in danger. We all knew she was in danger and we didn't do anything to stop this. It was our job to protect her, Sarah."
She nodded. "I know," she said quietly. She took a few slow, measured steps closer. "We didn't do what we said we were going to do. We didn't keep her safe like we promised. We...failed, Chuck. We failed."
He pushed his hands through his curls and yanked a little on them, shoving his hands forward with a jerk and letting out a furious growl, shaking his head. "This is so fucked."
Sarah swallowed hard. "It is fucked." And Sarah realized something as she stood there watching him try to deal with this.
This was the first time Chuck Bartowski—Agent Charles Carmichael—was facing what he'd perceive as a failed mission. And he was getting a good look at just how big the cost might be, the fact that the consequence of failure might be that somebody loses their life.
She didn't want to trivialize what had just happened, because Hannah Liu was a living, breathing human being, perhaps with a family, but definitely with a man who sincerely loved her and would feel her loss for quite some time. No, she wasn't trivializing any of that, but she couldn't help thinking this was something of a test for Chuck now that he'd made this decision to join the NSA and become a spy. This was par for the course in the spy world. And it mattered how he dealt with it.
"I failed," he breathed, the anger still in his face. "I failed and now she's dead."
"We failed, Chuck. This wasn't just your mission; it was our mission." She sighed then, walking up to him and stopping only when their faces were mere inches apart. "I need to tell you, because this is...your life now. You're a spy now, Chuck. As hard as you work, as much as you care, no matter how much ground you cover, no matter how long you're in the business, whether it's a decade, like me," she put a hand on her chest, "or way, way longer than a decade, like Casey… Failure is going to happen. You'll fail. And you can't let that stop you from getting the rest of the job done. I've…" She swallowed again. "I've had innocent people die under my watch. Assuming Hannah was as innocent as I...fear she might've been." The ache came back. "And you can't let it be in vain."
"Yeah," he muttered, nodding. "I know you're right. You're speaking from a place of experience. You're right. You're definitely right. But everything hurts. I let… I feel like I let her…"
"You didn't let any of this happen, Chuck. What else could we have done that didn't put more of a target on her for conspiring with federal agents?" She grabbed his arm tightly and forced him to look at her. "We'll remember her." The way she remembered all of them, the way some of them worked their way into her dreams some nights. "But right now, the buck stops with the Ring. We know they did this. Nicolas gave us an out so that we could keep working."
"He did. I know." He nodded.
"We need to figure out what Hannah's story is and we need to pinpoint some kind of motive for her being involved, and when we do, we can find our next step. Even if the Ring has the key, they're trapped on this ship with us. We'll get it back." She gave him a determined look. "Right?"
"Right." He licked his lips, his brow furrowed. "I-I need to get used to this… don't I?"
Sarah shook her head immediately without meaning to, and she caught herself too late. So she didn't backtrack. Instead she sighed and shut her eyes, putting both of her hands on his chest, sliding them up to his shoulders and squeezing before she looked him right in his face. "No. Don't get used to it, Chuck. That's the opposite of what I want you to do. Don't ever get used to it. Because if you do, that'll mean you've changed and I don't—That's exactly what I've been fighting against this whole time, Chuck." She took another breath and then moved onto her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his shoulders and hug him tight. "Whether this never happens again, or happens...a hundred times...don't lose your heart or your humanity. Okay?" He didn't respond, just hugging her back. "Do you promise me?"
"I promise," he said, somehow managing to cling even tighter. "I promise, Sarah."
"Good." She pulled back and fixed his collar. "There's a difference between being able to handle a situation, compartmentalize...and getting used to it. A woman was murdered today. We're going to take down the fuckers who did it. So open up that laptop and let's find out why she had that key in the first place."
The corner of his mouth twitched in something of a smile and there was a determined spark to his brown eyes that made her feel just for a moment like everything might be okay.
And then he spun back to the desk, shrugging off his coat, pushed his hand through his hair, and sat down on the chair, tugging it in close as he popped the laptop open and turned it on.
}o{
"Shit, of course it's password protected," Sarah was saying, but her voice cut off behind him as he bypassed it and got right onto Hannah's laptop. "W-What? How'd you—?"
"Hm?" He glanced over his shoulder at her as she braced one hand on the desk and the other on the back of his chair, hovering over him. Her jaw had fallen open. "Oh, this? It's easy. I just—Well, I can...explain it to you later."
"Right." She shook herself and nodded. "Right, of course. We need to figure out why she was given the key."
Chuck immediately scanned her desktop. She seemed neat and tidy, everything gathered up in zipped files that weren't clearly labeled. Things she probably understood herself, key words that would mean nothing to anyone else.
He pulled up the Internet browser then and looked for a bookmark or something to indicate which email service she used. It would be more of a task for him to get into her email if her password wasn't saved, or if she'd done a cookie sweep before she'd died.
Huffing in frustration at the complete lack of bookmarks altogether, he set his hand on the keyboard of the laptop and nibbled on his lip, trying to think of another way to figure out what Hannah had been up to, who she'd been corresponding with before she got onto this ship, how she'd gotten the key, why she'd been nabbed as the smuggler, and what she meant to do with it after she got to Rio de Janeiro.
He was trying to swallow the emotions of regret and guilt as he downsized the Internet browser and looked at the picture on her desktop. It was a photograph of Hannah standing beside some rudimentary stones popping up out of the ground, almost like less square versions of Stonehenge. And the sadness swept over him again.
But before he could say anything about it, or even just ask his partner if she had any ideas about which folder to open first, she leaned down over his shoulder and moved her face close to the side of the laptop, her pretty features wrinkled up in consternation.
"W-What are you doing?" he muttered.
"I don't know. Something's...off."
He blinked. "Huh?"
She straightened up and then stepped in front of him, kneeling down so that her face was aligned with the side panel of the laptop and she reached up to smooth her finger from the back to the front, then back again. "Hold on, let go," she breathed, and he took his hands off of the laptop, still supremely confused. She moved the laptop to face her better and then got down on her knees so that her eyes were level with the keyboard, almost as if she was measuring it for some reason.
"What is it?" he asked, incredibly curious, maybe even a little concerned.
"I don't know," she said, sounding frustrated, though he had a feeling it wasn't with him. She reached up and shut the laptop.
"H-Hey! I was—"
"Just hold on!" she said, distracted as she picked up the laptop. "It's not...level. I don't know. It just looks weird. Like the right side of it is up a little higher. Something's off."
"What do you mean it isn't level?"
She bit her lip and narrowed her eyes, turning the laptop and eyeballing it closely. "This is the Mabius 6X laptop, isn't it? You fix these all the time. And I remember getting a good look at the one you were fixing that night in the cage—"
"What?" he interrupted, sitting up straighter.
But she kept going as though she didn't hear him. "You had it...upside-down." She put the laptop on the desk upside-down then and ran her fingers over it. "This isn't what it looked like. This thing right here that's protruding. It's like an extra...layer...a plate or something." She shook her head. "That wasn't on the Mabius 6X you were fixing that night. I saw it sort of up close and I have a photographic memory. I also remember because you dropped one of these screws," she pointed, "and couldn't find it for, like, five minutes, and I was so tempted to come out from where I was hiding and help."
Chuck just gaped up at her as she halted, a look coming over her face. She must've realized what she'd just said and she swallowed, staring down at the laptop.
"My point is, there's something different about this laptop. Right here. Do you have a, um, something to take it off?"
He stood up, his mind going a mile a minute as he stared at her. "What night are you talking about? When did you see me fix a Mabius 6X? Hiding? Were you—Were you hiding and watching me?" Chuck wasn't sure what to think, but he was having a hard time pulling in a full breath at the caught look on her face.
Sarah huffed and shook her head. "It isn't important right now. We need to—"
"Yes. Yes, it is. It is important. To me. Right now. What night do you mean, Sarah?"
There was an unmistakable blush on her face. And then she finally looked up to meet his gaze. "It was the night after La Ciudad escaped, after the art exhibit. She was still on the loose and I had every intention of just...keeping watch at your place to make sure nothing happened, but then you left so I followed you."
"To the Buy More," he cut in. "That was the night I had to finish all the repairs. You were there?" he asked, his eyes widening.
She chewed on the inside of her cheek and pursed her lips, pulling them to the side. "Uh, yeah. I was there. I was watching out for you. Not-Not in a creepy way." She winced. "La Ciudad, she was… She could've followed you too, for all I knew, and I wanted to be there just in case she did."
Chuck winced and turned towards the laptop, feeling the heat of embarrassment flood through him. "Gah, holy shit. I didn't know—I had no idea anybody else was there."
"I know."
"I was—I was in my element, in the zone, did I do anything embarrassing? Should I apologize? Did I...I don't know. I don't know what comes outta my mouth sometimes when I'm alone and fixing those computers." He felt absolute panic rising from his chest.
"No," she said, setting her hand on his arm. "I should apologize."
He felt a little less panicked suddenly and he frowned, shaking his head. "No, ya shouldn't. You were doing your job. You were protecting me."
"I was watching you, Chuck, I wasn't just watching over you." She rolled her eyes at herself and kept blushing, shaking her head. "That's the truth. It was the first time I saw you...truly confident in yourself. Like you knew exactly what to do and were sure of yourself...the way you moved, how you just inherently knew how to do all of that stuff, the way you made it look so easy when I know it wasn't. How there were, like, fifty-seven different types of computers and laptops you were fixing and you tackled every single one of them with just as much skill as you did the last one." She shrugged and he found himself feeling dizzy almost as she glanced away. "I'd only known you for, like, a week or something. Maybe more. And I hadn't...seen you like that before. So, yeah, I was watching."
"You're...basically saying that yooooou…" He narrowed his eyes, bending his knees a bit to catch her gaze. When she flicked her blue eyes up to him, he bit back a gleeful smirk, keeping a straight face. "You liked what you saw?"
She huffed and rolled her eyes. "Shut up."
"That is what you're saying, though, isn't it?"
"Stop."
He didn't feel a speck of panic now. He could see her real answer in her face. "Was it the suspenders? I knew those were a good idea."
She clamped her lips between her teeth and shook her head at him. And then she sighed. "Please don't make fun of me. I shouldn't have been there, and I felt guilty, knowing you thought you were alone. And yeah, okay? I maybe thought that you were...very human and charming with the air drumming." He groaned and ducked his head with a wince. She'd seen that. God, that meant she saw his chair spins, too. And the way he sometimes let out proud snickers of satisfaction when a piece clicked perfectly into place. Damn it, that was embarrassing.
He decided to just suck it up, though.
"Well, you saw something nobody else has ever gotten to see. Not even Casey with his creepy surveillance of my entire private life. So feel special."
"I do," she said then. And she pointedly let go of him, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, looking almost shy suddenly. "I do feel special. And if it takes saying this for you to freaking take this weird plate thingy off the bottom of this altered Mabius 6X, I guess I'll just say it. I thought you were really cute. There."
Chuck felt the warmth blossoming in his chest. Even all the way back then, she'd found his bizarre habits when he was in his element fixing computers "charming" and "cute", and he wasn't all that sure what to do about that. So he just smiled, a slow smile.
"Will you take the fucking thing off the Mabius 6X?"
He shook himself. "Right. Got it. Okay. I'm, um, yes. Yes, I will do that." He cleared his throat and walked away, going to his bag and fishing around in it for his toolkit that he never left home without, and he snagged a few things he might use and walked back. "I will take this weird thing off of the bottom of this Mabius 6X…" But he looked at her again, that warmth still settling in his gut. "You recognized a Mabius 6X just by looking at it…"
"Yeah, you handle these all the time." He felt his jaw fall open. "What? You think I wouldn't pick this computer stuff up when I spend so much time with my 'boyfriend' who's the Nerd Herd supervisor?" she asked, tossing up the air quotes.
Nope. He had no idea what to do. But in spite of everything, he was absolutely certain that no matter what happened, he wasn't going to stop trying. Not with this woman. There was no damn way he wasn't going to find a way to make her see that this could work, that it would work, between them.
"Chuck, would you—?"
He cut her off, something coming over him, a wave of confidence and pure, unfiltered adoration, and he cupped her face and leaned in to give her a quick, warm kiss. He pulled back from it as she blinked her eyes open, her lips still pursed. "Sorry," he said, mostly by habit. But then he shook his head. "Actually, I'm not sorry. You definitely deserved that. Let's get this key out."
Her slight smile and blush died immediately. She went tense as he turned back to try to wedge the extra piece off of the bottom of the laptop. "Key? W-What?"
"Yeah," he chirped. "The key is definitely hidden here. It has to be. Or maybe some secret message. Otherwise, what's the point?" He glanced at her, then went back to it. "You're right. This definitely isn't from the manufacturer. I've seen hundreds of Mabius 6X laptops and none of them look like this. None of them have this. They're all always the same. It's one of the things that makes it such a reliable product. Consistency."
He popped off the panel, or whatever it was, and found nothing there. Just the same bottom of the laptop he was used to seeing on this model. "What? I was so sure…"
Sarah snagged the panel from his hand and then thrust it back in front of him, having turned it over. There, taped inside, was a key.
"Oh. Right. That makes sense." And then he realized what it was, actually realized, and he spun to look at her. "It's the key. We've got the key. It better be the key. It better not be a key to, like, a car. Or her rooftop condo."
Sarah made a face and then ripped the key out of the panel, tossing the tape away. "Chuck, it's what we're looking for. I know it is. But just to be sure, let's make sure Casey gets pictures of it from every angle."
"Oh, so he can see if the ridges match the lock on the safe."
She gave him a partly amused look, but he could also see the adrenaline in her face, the same adrenaline he was feeling. "He has access to a CIA program in Castle that will be able to accurately recreate the key digitally with pictures and it will tell us if the key fits the safe or not."
"Oh. That's...Yeah, that makes more sense. Spy tech."
Chuck held the key and turned it in his hand, holding it between two fingers so that she could focus on the tip and cuts of it, and then she sent Casey the photos.
"Do you think Shaw is going to get huffy over the fact that we never send any of this stuff to him and only to Casey?" he asked idly, turning the laptop back over.
"Casey's our partner. And your trainer. It makes sense that we think to contact him first."
"He's sidelined with a gunshot wound. And Shaw is technically a part of the team now. He's the second CIA agent to our little ragtag crew. You know, to balance it out so you aren't surrounded by filthy NSA guys." He smirked a little.
"Don't. I'd take being outnumbered by NSA to having a CIA agent like him around to balance things out. Especially considering what just happened to Hannah, I'm not...too keen on trusting anybody is who they say they are." She shook her head and set her phone down. It bleeped and she picked it up again. "Casey says, 'We're on it' which means he's in Castle with Shaw."
Chuck nodded and frowned, looking at the laptop again. "We've got the key, but I still want to know what happened to her, why she was the one tasked with such a dangerous task. She knew how dangerous it was. She knew what she was getting into. So why was she involved? Why'd she do it?"
"I don't know, Chuck. But the laptop might still have some answers. Maybe some of the folders on her desktop." She shrugged.
Sighing, he nodded and went back to the laptop. He was exhausted, his nerves frayed, the adrenaline from finding the key fading fast, but he knew he couldn't sleep anyway. It was partly the fact that he'd just seen a dead body—the body of someone he'd known and in spite of what she might be caught up in, he'd liked her too. But mostly, he couldn't stop thinking about the fact that they'd failed her. They hadn't kept her safe. And maybe she had walked into this knowing what might happen to her, but that didn't make this any easier to stomach. She'd been alive just a few hours ago. Alive enough that she'd put herself in a lot more danger by holding her boyfriend up in his cabin to take back the key she'd had him put in his safe this whole time, something she'd done to keep him safe.
It opened a pit in his stomach to think of what had been lost.
And for that matter, it made him want to keep Agent Sarah Walker in his sight for the rest of the time they'd be spending on this ship. Because he didn't want to end up like First Officer Valle, as selfish as he knew it sounded. And he did feel selfish for thinking it.
He opened up Hannah's laptop and got to work.
}o{
She was woken up by a quiet thumping sound. Blinking, lifting her head a little and groaning at the light spilling in through the slits in the drawn curtains, she was immediately assailed by a pain slicing through her shoulders and upper back. She winced and pushed herself up from where she'd eventually rested her arms on top of the desk and buried her face in them to sleep.
When had she done that? And what time was it?
She heard the thump again and turned to find Chuck in the chair next to hers, his forehead against the desk in front of him. He kept lifting it and dropping it again, lifting it and dropping it again, and it made a soft thump sound each time.
"Stop it, what are you doing?" she asked, grabbing his shoulder.
He jumped a bit, apparently not having realized she was awake. "Oh. You're awake. I didn't—Uh, I'm…" He growled and gestured to the laptop. "Nothing. Not a single freaking thing. And she wiped her cookies. Which, honestly that was super smart of her. Not even anything in her history on her web browser."
"Oh. The folders?"
"Nada. Just a lot of stuff about the company. Business documents. Not only was there nothing in there, I flashed a couple of times on some of the stuff..." She was much more alert suddenly. "Don't get too excited," he muttered with a disappointed look on his face, "there are a lot of big corporations in the Intersect and only some of 'em are there because they're crooked. There was nothing that implicated the company, nothing to connect 'em to the Ring."
"Shit. There's seriously nothing on there?"
"Not a thing. I combed through the whole damn thing, top to bottom. Even used some old tricks I've got in my back pocket on the thing to see if she hid anything behind encryptions…" He shook his head. "Besides the key she hid under it, there's nothing on here besides her work."
"That's probably why she hid the key on it. It's just a work computer for all intents and purposes." She rubbed her eyes tiredly, disappointed. And then she winced. "I'm sorry I fell asleep on you. I tried staying awake but I couldn't even follow what you were doing at a certain point and I just…"
"It's okay," he said with a shrug. "You needed it."
"Yeah, well...so do you." She checked her watch and saw that it was after nine in the morning. "Shit, how long was I out?"
Before he could answer, there was a loud crackly sound from the corner of the room they sat in and they both jumped, turning to look at one another.
"Attention passengers." Ah, she'd wondered about the intercom she'd spotted in the top corner of both of the rooms in their suite when they first walked into it days earlier before setting sail. "This is your captain speaking. On behalf of myself and the entire crew of the Arosa Empire, it is my sad duty to inform you all that one of our passengers has...passed away, very suddenly." There was a long pause, the crackling behind his voice that much louder as Sarah felt her stomach drop. She'd known the moment the announcement started what it would be about. "We wanted to inform all of you of this development for the sake of transparency. Unfortunately, due to this occurrence, we'll be forced to halt our journey to Rio de Janeiro and instead will be pulling into the dock nearest to us. We're two days out from Fortaleza. They're the nearest port that has room for us. Again, I'm deeply sorry to have to convey our change of plans to all of you. We will have staff and operators available to you all for any questions concerning this development, and how we will proceed after Fortaleza. Thank you for your patience. Please let us know if there is anything else we can help you with at this time."
There was a loud click and then silence. Sarah heard someone out in the hallway yelling angrily, a few other voices joining in on the frey. The passengers would not be happy about this, but more than anything, she was filled with a sudden feeling of dread…
"Sarah…"
"I know." She turned to Chuck. "We have a lot less time than we thought to figure this out."
"And a lot less time to get Langley to send us transport."
"Shit."
Sarah grabbed her phone immediately. Within moments, Shaw was on the other side of the line.
"Shaw, secure."
"Walker, secure."
Before she could speak, he cut in. "You found the key to the safe. Good work, Agent Walker. We'll have transport waiting for you in Rio de Janeiro on—"
"That's not good enough. We need a transport waiting for us in Fortaleza in two days time. Or—and I don't say this lightly, Agent Shaw—we're in some really deep shit."
"Fortaleza? Where even is that?"
"Northeast tip of Brazil. Find it on a map," she snapped. "Look, Hannah Liu was murdered in her cabin early this morning. By a Ring agent, I'm ninety-nine percent sure. They were looking for this key too. Because of Hannah's death, the captain's made the decision to make an unscheduled stop at the port in Fortaleza, I'm assuming to allow for an investigation into the murder…" Something occurred to her then as she glanced at Chuck. "And they'll probably find another few bodies soon enough, so suffice to say, we need to get the hell out of Fortaleza the second this ship docks. Literally."
"...Hannah Liu is dead?"
"Yes, Agent Shaw. She's dead. Did you hear me about the transport?"
"I heard you, Agent Walker," he snipped. "We'll make sure you have transport. I'll get Casey on it with Beckman immediately. And do not lose that key, whatever you do."
"I'm not letting it out of my sight."
"Have the Ring made you?"
"No."
"Chuck?"
"Agent Carmichael has not been compromised," she said pointedly.
"Good. Try to keep it that way until you make port in Forta—whatever." Sarah rolled her eyes and got a questioning look from Chuck. "And make sure you use secure lines when you call from here on out." What did he think this was?
"Understood," she said, knowing it wasn't worth being snarky at him.
She hung up and smacked the phone down. She didn't know if it was worse when her male counterparts throughout her career purposely condescended to her, or accidentally did it. Shaw's felt accidental, like he was just clueless. And it was almost more irksome.
"They gonna be able to get us a transport?" Chuck asked.
"Yes," she huffed. "Hopefully. Casey's going to get on it, according to Shaw. But I don't know where we're even making port in Fortaleza. I've never been there. I'm unfamiliar with the city. And even though the Ring haven't made us yet, it's only a matter of time before they do. And when they do, we're going to be seriously outnumbered. And with this." She lifted the key up between her fingers. She huffed and shook her head. "I'm going to keep this on me at all times. I'm not putting it in some damn safe or a hiding place."
Chuck scoffed. "Ain't no safe in the world that's safer than you holding onto it yourself." She gave him a look. "Oh, come on, Sarah. You'll beat their God damn asses if they even try it."
That made her smile, even as she shook her head at him.
Before she could respond, there was a rapid, desperate knock on their door. They looked at one another. "Steward?" Chuck whispered.
"Not likely. Hide the laptop."
She sprang to her feet and pulled her gun from where she'd hidden it, moving to the door carefully. The rapid knocking happened again and she looked over her shoulder to see that Chuck had effectively hidden the laptop.
Ripping the door open, she brought the gun up and pointed it at… First Officer Valle.
He looked at her with wide eyes and lifted his hands up by his head. "I'm-I'm not—"
"Sorry. Come in." She lowered her gun and stepped back, letting him rush in, before shutting the door again. "Better to be safe than sorry. I'm sure you know by now we have the key in our possession."
"The...what?"
She gave him a flat look and he shrugged. "Suppose I'm just practicing, in case anyone questions."
"What's the general mood out there?" Chuck asked, crossing to them and guiding Valle over to the couch where the man sat down miserably and pushed a hand through his hair in frustration.
"Not good. A lot of very angry passengers, confusion. This is going to put us off a full two or three days from our schedule date of arriving at Rio de Janeiro. It's a complete clusterfuck." His hands shook as he took the glass of alcohol Chuck had gone to get him. Three whole fingers of whiskey. Valle threw it back gratefully, emptying it. "Thank you," he sighed. "I'm—I don't know what to do."
"Your job," Sarah said. "For now, it's all you can do."
"Nobody knows about-about Hannah and I. I made sure of it this whole time, but… But now I have to just stand there and hear them...talk about her, ask questions, and pretend…" He gulped, his face twisting in agony. "Pretend I didn't love her more than...anything else in the world."
Chuck sat next to him, sending Sarah a look she couldn't quite decipher, before he put his hand on the other man's back and did his best to comfort him. "I'm sorry, Nicolas. I'm very sorry. I wish we could've—that we'd been able to do...something."
The First Officer of the Arosa Empire shook his head and held out a hand. "No. It isn't anything you did or didn't do. Neither of you could have. If I couldn't do it…" Anger came over him again. "You know, I'm angry. I shouldn't be. Not at her. But I am. She took so many chances she didn't have to take. I was here. I told her to stay in my cabin. Nobody can get into my cabin but me, not even the captain. She stayed with me often enough." Sarah saw Chuck's eyebrows pop and she was a little relieved Nicolas was too distracted by his own misery and regret to see it. "She could've just stayed there and she would've been safe. But she needed her independence, her own cabin, and then she refused to let me help, holding the gun on me to get that laptop back out of my safe." He cursed in Spanish and buried his face in his hands.
Sarah met Chuck's gaze as he quietly rubbed the other man's shoulder.
When Valle lifted his tear stained face from his hands, sniffing, there was determination there. "We're stopping at Fortaleza as I'm sure you heard." They both nodded. "We got into contact with authorities in Fortaleza. They're going to get into contact with American authorities, if they haven't already. They'll all be waiting for the Arosa Empire when we make it into port. There's going to be an intense investigation of the entire ship." Chuck winced at her and she ignored it since Nicolas was looking at her. "None of the passengers will be allowed off."
"Shit," Chuck muttered. "That means us, too." She gave him a look and he shrugged.
"I might have a plan to get you off anyway, but it will take some effort. I haven't worked out the kinks."
"Why are you helping us?"
The ship's officer turned and gave Chuck a steady look. "She told me...the night before she died… We were together in my cabin. And she said she trusted you. Both of you." He looked back to Sarah. "Told me to trust you, too. I didn't know I would walk into her cabin hours later to find her dead," he mumbled numbly. "It's why I need to tell you...everything I know. All of it."
Sarah gave Chuck a wide-eyed look, which he sent right back.
"We won't let you down," Chuck said then, shifting to face Nicolas better.
"You'd better not," he answered darkly. "Or I'll tell my captain, Brazilian Intelligence Agency, and whoever your government sends to meet us at port everything I know, too. I don't care if they throw me in prison. Those fucking bastards who-who killed her...they need to destroyed."
Sarah nodded vehemently. "You're right. And that's exactly what we mean to do. Tell us what you know. It might help us."
He nodded and took a deep breath. "These Ring people, they blackmailed her. She told me that she had to transfer that key into safe hands in Rio de Janeiro. She assumed another higher-up in the organization would be waiting there to receive it."
"Did she know what the key was for?" Sarah asked.
"I think so."
"Did she tell you?"
She watched him carefully for any signs he was withholding something, but he just shook his head miserably.
"It wasn't that she didn't trust me. But she was trying to...keep me safe I think. The less I knew, the less chance I'd have of getting hurt. I don't know." He shrugged and rubbed the back of his head. "All I know was they blackmailed her."
"That doesn't make any sense," Chuck muttered. And then he repeated himself even louder when Sarah met his eyes. "That doesn't make any sense. Why would the Ring blackmail her to bring the key to them, and then also send a bunch of their agents undercover to take it from her on the ship?"
"They aren't all the same," Valle said, shaking his head. Sarah and Chuck exchanged confused looks and he huffed in frustration. "The Ring. They're not all...working towards the same goal. She told me she was blackmailed by someone higher-up—Before you ask, I don't know who—and the Ring operatives who are here, on this ship, were sent by someone else. They want the key too, for...other reasons. I don't know, I was confused when she said it. She wouldn't tell me much more than that, but I do know she seemed… Well, not confused. If she'd just...If she'd told me everything, maybe she'd still be here. If she'd just let me all the way in…" His face crumbled in anguish and Sarah felt his words squeeze at her ribcage in the worst way.
She inadvertently looked at Chuck, then. But he his eyes were cast down, his brow furrowed.
"Blackmailed how?" Sarah asked then, as gently as she could. "Did she tell you what they were blackmailing her with?"
"Yeah. They've got her family locked up somewhere. They were gonna let them go when she brought the key to Rio and delivered it safely." Something occurred to him then and he looked up at her, eyes wide. "What's gonna happen to them now? She obviously isn't delivering the key. She's...She can't." He swallowed hard and looked ill for a moment, trying to compose himself.
"We're not going to let anything happen to them."
Sarah looked right at Chuck, fighting back the urge to be frustrated with him for saying that. It was one of her most golden rules as a spy, to not make promises she knew she might not be able to keep. Especially considering what had happened to Hannah, Chuck really shouldn't have said that.
And now Valle was looking at Chuck with hope. A lot of hope. Damn it.
But he was Chuck Bartowski. Through and through. And she was starting to wonder if there wasn't anything that would take this out of him—this warmth and need to make people feel safe, reassured, like there's at least one person who cares.
"Her family," Chuck said then, shaking his head. "They threatened her family to get her to smuggle that key. Why, though? Why her? Why choose a shoe heiress? Why not get one of your own Ring agents to do it?"
Sarah stared dully down at her feet. "Because who's more reliable, a terrorist agent in your terrorist regime who's obviously shown they aren't exactly loyal to any creed or cause? Or someone whose family's health and safety depend on the job getting done?"
God, this was horrific and bleak. She hated everything about what had happened to Hannah Liu. And now she was the one who felt a little sick.
"Fuck them," First Officer Nicolas Valle growled. "Fuck all of them. If I could find every single one of those rat bastards and throw them overboard, I would. Consequences be damned."
Sarah thought of the fact that she and Chuck had been gathering the identities and photographs of Ring agents he had flashed on and sending it back to Castle for Casey and Shaw to compile a massive dossier and list for the CIA and NSA's benefit. And she decided not to tell Nicolas about any of that. Just in case he acted on his threat.
He assured them that he'd told them everything he knew, and they thanked him and walked him to the door. Sarah opened it and checked down the hallway, both ways, before ushering him out. He said he would call them on their suite phone from his protected line in his cabin when he finalized his idea to get them off the ship when they docked in two days.
The implication was clear. One or both of them would have to be in the room at all times in case he called.
Sarah shut the door behind him and turned to lean back against it, crossing her arms. "Her family," she breathed. "They kidnapped her family to get her to bring that key to Rio de Janeiro. Why did they kidnap the Lius of all the families out there?"
"They must just be that rich." Chuck shrugged. "And-And maybe they thought someone like Hannah Liu wouldn't be checked or questioned as much because of her socialite status?"
"Perhaps. It's just...boggling my mind. What if there's more that she simply didn't tell him?" She scoffed. "There's plenty that she didn't tell him. I'm sure what we got just now is only the tip of the iceberg." Chuck winced. "What?"
"Don't talk about icebergs while we're on a cruise ship. Please."
She rolled her eyes and huffed in amusement. "I'm going to get a bit of shut-eye, and I suggest you do the same. You didn't get any sleep all night," she said over her shoulder as she walked through the living room toward the bedroom of the suite.
Sarah found herself fighting a chill that wouldn't go away once she finally got back into their bed, even with the warmth of Chuck's body mere inches from hers. Because she couldn't stop thinking about Hannah Liu and the decisions she'd made to protect the man she loved, to protect a family she also must've loved. She'd paid dearly for it. And by extension, so had her family and the man who loved her.
A/N: Please read and review. Thanks!
-SC and DC
